Climate

Difference Engine: Cloudy with a chance of...

IT WAS no accident that Manchester, that gumptious and radical heart of Victorian Britain, became the first industrial city and the cotton capital of the world. It is situated 50km or so from the coast, with its back to the hills, and on the brunt end of southwesterly winds which, laden with moisture from the warm Gulf Stream, dump their drizzle across the Manchester basin as they are forced up and over the Pennine chain. Nowhere else in nineteenth-century Europe was there such mild, moist air so perfect for spinning cotton.

With an abundance of it, Mancunians have good reason for being connoisseurs of climate. A quick glance at the clouds flitting across the sky each morning is usually enough to decide whether to leave the brolly behind or grab a mackintosh and galoshes. Growing up in the city’s hillier northern fringes, your correspondent learned from an early age to recognise the various species of cloud—from the low-lying layered sheets of stratus, up through the billowy cumulus forms, to the high-flying tufted wisps of the cirrus family.

Clouds are something he does not get to see so much beneath the blue skies of southern California—where, during the summer months, the only cumulus tend to be signs of wildfire in the mountains. True, along the coast in late spring, the morning “marine layer” is especially thick, giving rise to the local weather-lady’s cheery remarks about “May Gray” or “June Gloom” and the possibility, just perhaps, of rain.

Though frequently dismissed as a Californian euphemism for fog, the marine layer is not actually mist or cloud. Strictly speaking, it is simply a medium in which clouds can form—a layer of air trapped between the surface of the cold ocean and an inversion layer above formed by hot air spilling out of the high desert. When the relative humidity of the trapped air reaches 100%, condensation commences and a sheet of stratus begins to form below the inversion layer. Fog, by definition, is stratus in contact with the ground or the sea.

In southern California, the marine layer is at its thickest just before dawn. As the onshore breeze picks up, the layer migrates inland—only to evaporate as the sun rises in the sky. Being 220 metres (720 feet) up the hillside, your correspondent is usually above it all, though there are times when the marine layer is thick enough at night to envelop even his eyrie. Then, as far as he is concerned, it is plain and simple fog, requiring a car’s ankle-height fog lamps to illuminate the road.

Foggy days invariably occur when the Pacific High—a large mass of high-pressure air which tends to hover over southern California and its adjacent ocean—is at its strongest. At such times, the high-pressure air sinks faster than usual, gaining additional heat as it is compressed still further. It is this extra warm air descending from above that strengthens the inversion layer, and allows thicker and more persistent clouds to form.

The inversion layer along the Californian coast is also affected by conditions far out to sea, such as El Niño-Southern Oscillation—a mechanism operating in the Pacific that helps regulate the flow of heat from the tropics to the poles. Because the Pacific is such an enormous reservoir of heat, it is the main engine driving the global wind pattern. Any change in the Pacific's temperature alters weather around the world.

Known in the media as simply El Niño (“the boy child” in Spanish)—because it was first noticed off the coast of Ecuador and northern Peru around Christmas time—the phenomenon occurs when there is a rise in temperature of the surface of the tropical eastern Pacific, coupled with an increase in the surface air pressure in the western Pacific. The average rise in temperature is only 0.5ºC or so above normal, and lasts for just nine months to a year or two at most.

In California, El Niño brings a warmer, wetter winter. The opposite effect, La Niña, occurs when conditions in the tropical Pacific reverse, with cooler surface temperatures in the east and lower air pressures in the west. This results in dryer winters on the West Coast. Oscillations between the two siblings are irregular, occurring every two to seven years. Whichever prevails determines whether places around the world will suffer flood, drought, famine, hurricanes or any of the other plagues of mankind.

Early in 2011, computer models were predicting a Niño, albeit a weak one. In the end, the Pacific decided to give La Niña another turn at influencing global weather. No-one is sure what is in store for this winter. Most models say that, after two Niñas, sea temperatures imply a Niño is on the cards. A few suggest a third Niña is still a possibility. Others say it could be neither (La Nada). For the record, the United States National Weather Service has officially declared last year’s Niña to have dissipated.

Whatever, the cycle seems to be getting out of whack. For several decades, Niños have been coming more frequently, Niñas less so. Fingers point to global warming. But scientists caution that more research needs to be done before any direct correlation can be established. Satellite data go back only so far.

Circumstantial evidence, though, suggests that something new is underway. A variation of El Niño has been detected in the central Pacific, well away from the ocean's eastern edge where it is normally born. This phenomenon, known as El Niño Modoki (Japanese for “looks like, but slightly different from”), causes unusual effects—including a lowering of tide heights, a strengthening of waves, and a tendency to make storms move south.

Beaches from Washington state to southern California took a pounding during the winter of 2009-10, with the shoreline being eroded hundreds of feet in some places by storms heading in a southward direction. Local climatologists blame El Niño Modoki for the damage, and predict more of the same in the years ahead. Again, it is too early to say whether this new phenomenon in the mid-Pacific is the result of global warming. What is not in doubt is that sea levels are rising. Add the effects of El Niño Modoki, and it is clear that coastal erosion along the western seaboard of North America could get a whole lot worse.

Certainly, a shift to a warming Niño this winter, following two successive years of cooling Niñas, could trigger a record high in the surface temperature of the eastern Pacific. Justified or not, that may be taken in some quarters as evidence of the anthropogenic origin of global warming. In reality, climate science is no closer to answering that conundrum than it is to finding how precisely clouds respond to global warming.

An assorted bunch of optimists believe clouds will save the world from the catastrophic impact of greenhouse gases. They put their faith in the notion that, as the atmosphere warms up, there will be fewer of the thin cirrus clouds in the upper atmosphere—the ones that normally let sunlight through, but trap the infra-red being radiated back from the surface. With fewer cirrus around, they imagine the atmosphere will behave like a thermostat, venting excess heat into space.

A pity all the evidence says otherwise. The conventional wisdom held by working climatologists is that clouds are unlikely to change enough to offset the effects of global warming. The best that can be hoped for is that they remain neutral. The worst is that they amplify the warming trend, as rising temperatures deplete the thicker layers of clouds in the lower atmosphere. These are the crucial clouds that reflect much of the incident sunlight back into space and keep the Earth cool.

On both issues—the increasing frequency of Niño events and the role that clouds are expected to play in global warming—there are nowhere near enough historical data from weather satellites to refute, finally and categorically, all the crackpot notions about climate change (or lack thereof). Another problem is the difficulty of simulating both effects on computers. To date, the machines and software have not been up to the job of modelling the fine detail needed to make meaningful projections. That, thankfully, is about to change.

In the end, though, everything hinges on learning, unambiguously, how sensitive the climate is to greenhouse gases. Sceptics believe it is not particularly so. But the fact is that, without the data, no-one knows for certain. Meanwhile, the whole climate issue has become so politically charged that the policy debate has become paralysed and bogged down in entrenched positions. The danger, of course, is that if the climate's sensitivity to greenhouse gases turns out to be as high as some researchers fear, and nothing has been done about it, then the children and grandchildren of the present generation are stewed.

On a lighter note, the marine layer beneath your correspondent’s hillside home thickened today, and cumulus clouds formed out to sea. For a wistful moment, it looked as though a shower might be on its way.

Exactly. You probably refer to the amount of heat that goes into warming the (deep) oceans.

Indeed, oceans take up over 93% of the heat added by the enhanced greenhouse effect, and surface air temperatures can fluctuate considerably if that ocean heat uptake is just a fraction more or less. We should be tracking ocean heat content, not surface air temperatures.

Ah, yes, immediately a denier concludes that the scientists haven't the foggiest. That was to be expected.
But Macumazan makes it easy to show him for the fool he (or she) is by suggesting that the world may not have warmed at all. One look at NASA or the MET office or any other major temperature series suffices to prove him wrong.
More news for you from NOAA, Macumazan:
- The average combined global land and ocean surface temperature for September 2012 tied with 2005 as the warmest September on record, at 0.67°C (1.21°F) above the 20th century average of 15.0°C (59.0°F). Records began in 1880.
- The globally-averaged land surface temperature for September 2012 was the third warmest September on record.
- The average combined global land and ocean surface temperature for January–September 2012 was the eighth warmest such period on record, at 0.57°C (1.03°F) above the 20th century average.

Thank God to see an Economist article that does not demand of its readers that they accept "the science is settled". One anticipates posts from SenseSeeker extolling the accuracy of the climate models, yet not one of them predicted the actual 16-year hiatus in warming despite the constantly rising CO2 levels. It appears, on the empirical evidence, that the magnitude of actual temperature increase predicted by the much vaunted radiative physics theorizing, is in fact vastly less, if it even exists at all. There are evidently other factors at work whose reality ought to induce humility in the radiative physicists. Time, one would think, also to lessen the taxation burden that bureaucrats have imposed on the citizenry on the basis of this dodgy application of science.

"The danger, of course, is that if the climate's sensitivity to greenhouse gases turns out to be as high as some researchers fear, and nothing has been done about it, then the children and grandchildren of the present generation are stewed. "

Having lived for a long time in Manchester, England, knowing well California, I fully understand your correspondents hesitations.

I now spend my quality time in a fishing village in Western Europe.

Whether I'm right or wrong I've maintained for years my theory that the boundary between the almost permanent Azores anti-cyclone and the British Isles cyclone is right above it.

So weather is easy to predict. In the rather short Summer, if the wind blows from the North you have few clouds and harsh winds; from the West, fog as in San Francisco in August, from the South West rain.

It's a little different in Winter: you get frost on the sand if the wind blows from the East, rain if it comes from the North, West or South West.

Many holiday makers say the place is so good Mr. Winter spend s Summer there.

"Any online discussion of religion, race, climate change, or sexual preference will require precisely 2 posts to line up 2 opposing sides, and precisely zero points of view will have been altered when the discussion is complete."

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." – Upton Sinclair

Pascal’s wager or gambit comes to mind when reading comments on anthropogenic climate change. From a risk analysis perspective, I can’t fault Pascal, but I do find his argument unconvincing as a proof of existence. If you plug in climate change for existence of god, the risk analysis seems to hold and the question of existence of the phenomena remains unaltered.

“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.” -- Richard P. Feynman

By the way , I hope you do know the difference between weather and climate. We are here talking about "Climate" Change , one cold winter here and there make no difference to the issue .

As for the "whatsupwiththat.com" , seems more like a gossip cum advertisement portal to me. Good that you find some kind of mental solace with like minded folks on it , I would like to keep my eyes open in the real world.

Oldest trick in the world, EWO. Start the trend with a peak year. I don't think you'll fool many with that any more.

As you well know, 1998 was a very warm year due to an exceptionally strong El Nino, which transfers heat from the ocean to the atmosphere. And of course, you also selected the data set that gives the trend you like best, over this carefully selected short period.

"It is situated 50km or so from the coast" "220 metres (720 feet)" "The average rise in temperature is only 0.5ºC or so above normal"

What the ...

Why the conversions and non-conversions?

Why 50km - so "European" readers certainly, only some British and probably few Amercian readers will understand? Why 220 metres (720 feet) - why not let "Europeans" do the conversion from feet? Why isn't 0.5ºC converted to Fahrenheit for American readers?

This past Summer the American Midwest and South suffered such a devastating Biblical Drought, that folks WANTED a Hurricane to attack their land and leave needed rain. Many hurricances disappointed as they veered off course and rained on the Carribean or caused landslides in Haiti. If they could, Americans would have loved to divert the rain precipitation to the Midwest.

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World weather catastrophes can be seen as simple problems of Maldistribution:
Some areas get too much water, others too little water, too much sun and heat, others too much cold.

IT is Theory of Marxism applied to Weather.

The Solution is Simple Redistribution of Weather.
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Parched areas of Africa, India, Mid East and the American South would have loved to have the Russian flooding rains.
The Indian Monsoon Rains came, but they were wasted precipitating in the Indian Ocean, instead missing their target 200 miles north in the subcontinent where they could have cured the drought.
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Global Warming can be seen as mal-distribution of cloud cover and rain.
In America, while the Midwest and South bake => The West Coast, Alaska and Pacific Northwest are having record rainfall and a cooler summer.
Alternative solution to Global Warming: Redistribute the clouds, precipitation and cold fronts to areas of heat waves and drought.
The mechanics have yet to be worked out: Giant fans, Giant positioned jet engines, Controlled Explosions, or air plane shepherding.

Ask a 5 year old how to move a cloud--I am sure they have tons of ideas!
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Moving a Cloud is easier than moving a Continent.

....Or Constructing a gigantic space solar shade. Or changing the orbit of earth. Or recolonizing a new planet one light year away. Or reinventing the entire Industrial Revolution.

Sure, the standard preprogrammed response used by the ecosheep! Of course, wouldn't think to mention the TWO year La Nina that immediately followed and what that does to any trend wudja? So let's have a look at the downward trend from 2001 onward!

Well Mr. Cave Man, you are certainly living up to your moniker aren't you? So where do you think this Paul Clark gets the data on the website? Does he just make it up? Um no! It is from exactly these authoritative sources that you suggest! His website is simply an aggregation point for such information with some handy graphing tools! Sheesh!

Not surprised though given you believe the EPA is a good site to get information! Like it's not biased given the environmental radicals in charge there!

Want a good site with real open thought driven by science and not pseudo-religous dogma?

El Nino/La Nina cycles are caused by complex interactions between ocean and atmosphere that is medicorely represented in the state-of-the-art models. It isn't new news in our field that models do not too great in predicting them. We were better than where we were, but much are to be desired.

The problem with not sufficient data will not go away in the immediate future. The historical observations are just too limited and sketchy. There are active work to re-create climate history with whatever info that can be found.

Regardless, we should still use whatever best knowledge we have, and be ready to update them as new information come to light. There is little doubt the Earth environment is changing - climate (with larger uncertainity) and other components (deforestation, pollution, biodiversity with lower uncertainity) of the Earth system.

Decisions should be made by the best info with what you have. The politics of climate change have become more marriage of ideology and self interest rather than science and knowledge.